The Last Grizzly

The grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) is North America’s most feared predator. While their fearsome reputation is somewhat overblown, few would argue just how intimidating these brown bears can be. Reaching weights of up to 800 lbs., able to run 35 mph in short bursts, and sporting some of the most terrifying claws in the animal kingdom, grizzlies are animals to be respected and left alone.

 

Grizzlies once roamed throughout the entire western United States and points south. These bears were able to thrive in different climates and geographies and ranged from the Great Plains, to the heavily forested mountains of the Rockies, and to the arid desert lands of the American Southwest and Mexico. But did they ever make Texas their home?

It is well-established that the smaller black bear (Ursus americanus) resides in Texas. These bruins are plentiful in the Big Bend country of west Texas and are beginning to return to the heavily wooded eastern portion of the Lone Star State; an area from whence they were hunted to the point of extirpation in the early 1900s. Despite having been absent from the region for decades, black bear lore remains strong there. Old timers still recount the story of a two-year-old child that disappeared into the Big Thicket of southeast Texas. The child was missing for weeks until she was found alive and well, but in the company of a jealous she-bear. The story goes that once the child was rescued, the sow bear tracked her down and showed up at the residence of the child’s family on the edge of the forest. The bear tried to break into the home – presumably to retrieve her “cub” – and had to be killed by the little girl’s father. Another story, often related by the great bear hunter, Ben Lilly, was the tale of a male bruin that was shot and wounded by a farmer. The bear survived and harbored such hate for the farmer that he tormented him for years afterward. The vengeful bear is said to have killed the farmer’s calves and colts and destroyed his crops. There are many more fantastic tales about black bear encounters in the Lone Star State, but are there any about grizzlies? Sadly, no.

 

Well, that isn’t completely true. There is one.

 

In his book, Bear Stories, Joe M. Evans tells the tale of the only grizzly bear ever officially documented in the Davis Mountains of west Texas. In fact, it is the only grizzly known to have ever been killed anywhere in the Lone Star State. There had been rumors that the great bears existed in limited numbers in the Davis Mountains years before, but by the 1890s – when the tale Evans tells took place - the suspected sub-species of grizzly that had been tentatively labeled texensis seemed to be completely absent from the region. As it turned out, at least one individual remained.

 

In those days, Evans and his friends – avid bear hunters all - held an annual bruin hunt in the Davis Mountains. “We took our families,” Evans wrote. “Those were happy days.” It was on November 2, 1890 when the hunters discovered the carcass of a partially eaten cow in a gulch near the head of Limpia Creek in Jeff Davis County. Near the carcass, the hunters discovered a bed of pine straw ten feet long. Next to the nest, a bear track. A BIG bear track. The print was thirteen inches long and right at six inches wide. The group quickly realized this was no black bear. In fact, it seemed the bruin was one of exceptional size and strength…even for a grizzly.

 

The giant bear had dragged the cow for one hundred yards down the side of a mountain. “In doing so," former Texas Ranger A. J. Sowell said, “The grizzly hung her around a small tree, but…continued to pull until he broke the tree down and then went on with his load, breaking the horns off the cow when they would hang on rocks.” The thought of an animal strong enough to accomplish such a feat gave more than just the hunters pause. Of the thirty-five bear dogs present, only four had the sand to take up the trail of the big grizzly. The dogs followed the great bear’s scent for five miles before they finally cornered him in a stand of pines.

The first two hunters to arrive on the scene were John Means and C. O. Finley. The pair opened up on the enormous bear with all they had. Each man pumped five rifle slugs into the grizzly, which they estimated weighed at least one thousand pounds. The roars of the enraged, and now dying, grizzly echoed through the canyon, reaching the ears of the rest of the hunting party still a mile away. The massive grizzly did manage to take a small measure of revenge before expiring, killing one of the prized bear dogs with a single swipe of one of its huge, clawed paws. “He literally, broke the dog to pieces,” Evans wrote.

 

The hunters had the bear’s hide – which took four men to load onto a packhorse -  tanned and mounted. Even after the head and legs were removed from the hide, it remained large enough to cover a double bed. The skull of the great bear was sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., where in 1918 a scientist assigned sub-species status to the bruin. An effort was made by Evans and his congressman to have the skull returned on loan to Texas in 1935. Evans wanted to display the skull as part of the Texas Centennial celebration. The Smithsonian officials declined the request. They felt the specimen was too rare to be displayed outside of the Washington D.C. museum.

Today, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department confirms that black bears have rebounded quite nicely in the Big Bend area since the peak of the bear hunting days of the late 1800s and early 1900s; however, no one has seen a grizzly there – or anywhere else in Texas – since Victorian times. Hopes that a grizzly had returned to the region were raised when unusually large bear tracks were found in the Guadalupe Mountains in 1931; however, no one ever saw the bruin responsible.

 

When reading of the demise of the only grizzly known to have ever stalked Texas soil, I can’t help but feel a bit melancholy. Joe Evans did not seem to feel the same way. He wrote in his book, “The killing of this grizzly was the climax of all our hunting experiences in the Davis Mountains.” No doubt, this quote will rub many the wrong way today, but try not to be too hard on Joe Davis and his hunting friends. It was a very different time.

 

Reports of the “ghost grizzlies” of the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado filter in on a semi-regular basis. I have even heard of a grizzly sighting in the Santa Fe National Forest of northern New Mexico within the last few years. If valid, that means one of these great bruins was alive and well only 360 miles, or so, from El Paso. Still, I don’t hold out much hope that the grizzly will ever return to Texas. As big as the Lone Star State is, I am just not sure there remains room for the grizzly bear.

 

What a shame.

 

 

Sources:

“Grizzly Bear.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Accessed October 8, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/animal/grizzly-bear. 

“Grizzly Bear.” National Wildlife Federation. Accessed October 8, 2022. https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Mammals/Grizzly-Bear. 

Abernethy, Francis Edward, ed. Tales from the Big Thicket. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1966. 

Cox, Mike. Big Bend Tales. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2011. 

Dubois, Scott. “Davis Mountains ‘Silvertip’ Grizzly Bear – 1899.” Wild Texas History, May 10, 2020. https://wildtexashistory.com/davis-mountains-grizzly-bear-1899/. 

Burnham, Josh, and Nick Mott. “Timeline: A History of Grizzly Bear Recovery in the Lower 48 States.” Montana Public Radio. MTPR, November 2, 2021. https://www.mtpr.org/montana-news/2021-04-02/timeline-a-history-of-grizzly-bear-recovery-in-the-lower-48-states. 

“Ursus Horriaeus Texensis-Texas Grizzly Bear+Bell,Finley,Hulling,Means,Merriman.” eCrater. Accessed October 8, 2022. https://www.ecrater.com/p/30848833/ursus-horriaeus-texensis-texas-grizzly.

 

 

 

The Missionary, the Former Slave, and the Sasquatch

What do an eighteenth-century Jesuit missionary and a former slave from the state of Arkansas have in common? I hate to disappoint any of you that thought this might be the opening line to a bad joke, it is actually a legitimate question. Read on for the answer.

In my mind, some of the strongest sources of anecdotal evidence regarding the existence of the sasquatch are those that pre-date the coining of the term bigfoot in an article about a catskinner named Jerry Crew - who found massive human-like tracks around his road-building equipment in California’s Six Rivers National Forest in August of 1958 - and the explosion of the Patterson-Gimlin footage on the world stage in October of 1967. Sightings reported before these two seminal events cannot be dismissed as the work of hoaxers seeking to hop on the bigfoot bandwagon. The sasquatch was all but unknown to the Europeans who began flooding the North and South American continents in the 1500s…and to the slaves that they brought with them. Their accounts of bipedal, hair-covered creatures simply cannot be dismissed out of hand.    

 

I would like to discuss here two such historical sightings. The incidents are not well-known, but they may well be extremely important when attempting to trace just how far back sightings of wood apes might go. The similarity between these two accounts cannot be denied and both lend credibility to the opinion of those who believe the animal commonly referred to as bigfoot was being seen well before the 1950s by people of different cultural backgrounds living many miles apart.

     

The first incident comes directly from the writings of a Jesuit missionary who worked among the people of the province of Sonora, Mexico – a region that stretched up from northwest Mexico to the Sierra Madre from Cjeme (now Ciudad Obregon), near the California coast, to Tuscon - in the eighteenth-century. Father Ignaz Pfefferkorn (b. 1725), a German Jesuit lived and worked among the Pima Indians from 1756 to 1767. Details of his work and life among these people can be found in his Descripcion de la Provincia de Sonora. The diaries, journals, and logs of missionaries have long been highly valued by anthropologists and historians. Pfefferkorn’s work was no different and he is considered by academics to have been an extremely reliable and credible observer. His writings continue to be cited by historians to this day. Among Pfefferkorn’s writings were descriptions of the local wildlife. Among the descriptions of what would be considered common animals, the good father wrote about the different bears (differentiated by their color) found in the region. He wrote:

 

“Of the Sonora bears some have black hair, others dark gray, and the smallest number are a reddish color. These last are the most cruel and harmful, according to the statements of herdsmen.”

 

Only two species of bear are known to have ever lived in the Province of Sonora during the eighteenth-century. The black bear (Ursus americanus) and the grizzly (Ursus arctos horribilis) both made Sonora part of their home range during the time in question. While black bears can be black, blonde, or reddish, it is likely the cinnamon-colored bears that were “the most cruel and harmful” were grizzlies. While these grizzlies were likely the animals most often responsible for the killing of livestock in the region, some of the other activities attributed to them may well have been the work of something else.

 

Pfefferkorn, while documenting bear activity related to him by the indigenous tribesmen, in some cases may have actually been recording accounts of bigfoot interaction with humans. If so, his accounts are some of the earliest ever written down in North America. One intriguing passage is below:

 

“Bears are a special menace to stock raising, for they eat many a calf, and, if no smaller prey falls into their clutches, they will attack even horses, cows, and oxen. They delight especially in eating maize as long as it is still tender and soft. Woe to the field if a hungry bear breaks into it at night. He eats as much as he can and makes off with as much as he can grasp and carry in his mighty arms. In so doing he ruins even more of the field by breaking it down and treading upon it. The inhabitants assert that a bear defends himself by throwing stones when one attempts to chase him away and that a stone hurled from his paws comes with much greater force than one thrown from the hand of the strongest man.”

 

I do not think I have to tell anyone that a bear cannot throw stones; nor is it capable of walking bipedally in order to carry off large amounts of corn in its “mighty arms.” Pfefferkorn was familiar with bears. He had traveled across the region for many years and had seen many bruins. Pfefferkorn even witnessed a grizzly kill his Indian guide on one trip across Sonora (the guide had attempted to kill the bear, succeeded only in wounding it, and paid the ultimate price when the animal turned on its tormentor). This being the case, it is strange that Pfefferkorn would attribute rock-throwing and the ability to carry large amounts of corn away while walking on two legs to grizzlies. I think it is entirely possible that the stone-hurling, corn-stealing, bipedal “bears” of Sonora might have actually been wood apes.

 

A strikingly similar account comes from another historical source: a former Arkansas slave. Doc Quinn was one of the oldest living residents of Miller County, Arkansas (yes, the same Miller County that would become known as the home of the Fouke Monster of The Legend of Boggy Creek fame) when he was interviewed by Cecil Copeland at his home in Texarkana in the 1930s. Doc recalled when he was first brought to the plantation of one Colonel Ogburn – between Index and Fulton on the Red River - that there was a section of the property dominated by an immense canebrake. This canebrake was a favorite retreat of bears and other wild animals. It was all but impossible to go in after problem bears that would steal out of the thicket at night and take livestock, so the plantation owner had the slaves round up the hogs and animals and place them in pens at the end of the day. Several slaves were charged with standing guard at night over the domesticated animals. The efforts of the slaves helped somewhat, but bears were still seen often and some of their actions “were almost human.” The following is a passage taken from the book Bearing Witness: Memories of Arkansas Slavery Narratives from the 1930s WPA Collection in which Doc Quinn describes to Cecil Copeland the odd behavior of a “bear” he came across in a cornfield one day:

 

“The bear picked off an ear of corn and put it in his bended arm. He repeated this action until he had an armful, and then waddled over to the fence. Standing by the fence, he carefully threw the corn on the other side, ear by ear. The bear then climbed the fence, much in the same manner of a human being, retrieved the corn, and went on his way.”

 

Sounds familiar, does it not? The simple truth is that bears cannot stroll around in a bipedal fashion while plucking ears of corn from stalks in the field with one front paw and place them into the crook of their other front “arm.” The description of how Quinn witnessed this animal climb a fence “in the same manner of a human being” is fascinating. The entire incident simply does not describe bear behavior in any form or fashion.

Quinn provides another interesting anecdote in the same interview. I thought long and hard about including it here, not because it is not interesting (it is), but because Doc Quinn’s words are transcribed in such a way that his dialect is evident. Some hot-button words, including the n-word, are used. After wrestling with it for a while, I decided to include the account here with only one minor edit (I decided not to type the n-word out. I fear in today’s climate, I would be accused of approving of it or some such thing). Again, I would remind readers these are not my words. These are the words spoken by former Arkansas slave, Doc Quinn and transcribed by his interviewer, Cecil Copeland. The text comes straight from the book previously mentioned. Try to focus on the story Doc Quinn is telling and not the language and terminology he uses. The account is as follows: 

 

“Late one ebenin’, me an’ anudder (edit) named Jerry wuz comin’ home frum fishin’. Roundin’ a bend in de trail, whut do we meet almos’ face to face? – A great big ol’ bar! Bein’ young, and blessed wid swif’ feet, I makes fo’ de nearest tree, and hastily scrambles to safety. Not so wid mah fat frien’. Peerin’ outen thru de branches ob de tree, I sees de bar makin’ fo’ Jerry, an’ I says to mahself: ‘ Jerry, yo’ sins has sho’ kotched up wid yo’ dis time.’ But Jerry, allus bein’ a mean (edit), mus’ hab had de debbil by he side. Pullin’ outen his Bowie knife, dat (edit) jumps to one side as de bar kum chargin’ pas’, and’ stab it in de side, near de shoulder. As de bar started toinin’ roun’ to make annuder lunge at de (edit) he notice de blood spurtin’ frum de shoulder. An’ whut do yo’ think happen’? Dat ole bar forgets all about Jerry. Hastily scramblin’ aroun’, he begins to pick up leaves, an trash an’ clamps dem on de wound, tryin’ to keep frum bleedin’ to deaf. Yo’ ax did de bar die? Well, suh, I didn’ wait to see de result. Jerry, he done lef’ dem parts, an’ not wantin’ to stay up in dat tree alnight by mahself, I scrambles down an’ run fo’ mile home in double quick time!”

 

I ask you, what kind of bear notices it is bleeding, stops in the middle of an altercation, begins gathering leaves, and then packs its own wound? I will tell you the answer. None. No bear behaves in this manner. If Doc Quinn is not spinning a yarn to his interviewer, the creature his fishing partner, Jerry, tangled with was certainly no bear. Was it an aggressive sasquatch? Certainly, the location was right as the aggressive nature of the Fouke Monster would be well documented some years later. There is a real shortage of viable alternatives if the creature in question was not a bear.

 

The parallels between these two accounts – accounts separated by more than a century and approximately 1,400 miles – are uncanny. Bears cannot and do not gather up corn in their “arms” and walk away with it in a bipedal fashion. Yet, a Jesuit missionary and a former Arkansas slave describe observing this same behavior. Doc Quinn’s account of how his fishing partner, Jerry, tangled with an animal that packed its own wound after being stabbed lends credence to the theory that something other than a bear was roaming about Miller County, Arkansas in his youth. Is it possible that these two men from very different worlds - Father Ignaz Pfefferkorn and former slave Doc Quinn - described the same type of animal? An animal they had no name for? An animal that just might have been a wood ape?

 

Food for thought.

 

*Special thanks to NAWAC Chairman Emeritus, Alton Higgins, who authored the article, “A Sonoran Sasquatch,” that I drew heavily from for this post.

 

Sources:

 

Brown, D. E. (1996). The Grizzly in the Southwest: Documentary of an Extinction. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

Pfefferkorn, I., Treutlein, T. E., & Pfefferkorn, I. (1949). Sonora A Description of the Province. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Higgins, A. (2010, November 19). A Sonoran Sasquatch? Retrieved January 11, 2021, from https://www.woodape.org/index.php/sonoransasquatch/

Lankford, G. E. (Ed.). (2006). Bearing Witness Memories of Arkansas Slavery. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. 

 

 

 

 

 

Most Recent European Great Ape Discovered; Provides Clues to the Adaptability of the Great Ape Diet

According to an article on the Science Daily website, a team of scientists from Germany, Bulgaria, and France have discovered a 7 million year old hominid molar that proves that great apes survived much later in Europe than had been thought.

The tooth, a pre-molar, of a hominid was discovered near the Bulgarian town of Chirpan and proves that great apes were present in Europe until 7 million years ago. This is 2 million years later than anyone previously believed. Scientists from the Bulgarian Academy of Science, the French Centre national de la Recherche Scientifique, and the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tubingen teamed up on the project and share credit for this discovery which may cause some major changes in how the timeline of hominid evolution is viewed.



Scientists have long thought that great apes went extinct in Europe approximately 9 million years ago due to changing climactic and environmental conditions. The gradual change of European ecosystems from thick jungles and evergreen forests to a savannah-like landscape with a seasonal climate was thought to be too much for apes, who were heavily dependent on fruit, to survive. This newly discovered pre-molar, identified as hominid based on morphology and the thickness of the enamel, was discovered in fossiliferous sands estimated to be 7 million years old. Whatever this European great ape was, it post-dates the Ouranopithecus macedonensis fossils, found in Greece, by 2.2 million years.

Scientists found other animals in the fossil bearing level of sediment that one would expect to find in a savannah environment. The fossilized remains of elephants, giraffes, gazelles, antelopes, rhinos, and sabre-toothed cats were all found in the strata with the hominid tooth. The discovery strongly suggests that European hominids were able to adapt to the environmental changes far more easily than previously suspected. This hypothesis is backed up further by analysis of the tooth’s masticatory surface under an electron microscope. This analysis revealed that the Bulgarian hominid had partaken of some rough and abrasive foods like grass, seeds, and nuts. This diet would make the Bulgarian ape’s feeding behavior very similar to that of later African hominids like the australopithecids who survived up until about 4 million years ago.

The article, which you can access here, goes on to share some thoughts about where the origins of humans might actually lie. Scientists have long thought that human evolution took place exclusively in Africa and that humans migrated to other continents from there. Evidence is beginning to pile up that point to a significant part of human evolution taking place in Europe and western Asia. What really caught my eye, however, was the final statement in the article which says in part, “…both investigations document an at least 10 million year lasting population of great apes in Europe and a significant evolution from fruit-eaters to harder object feeders.”

Followers of this site likely can guess where I’m going next. If the great apes of Europe were able to successfully adapt to a pretty substantial change in climate and transition from feeding almost exclusively on fruit to eating all manner of rougher foods, why couldn't a great ape that had migrated to North America do the same? The short answer, in my opinion, is that they could...and did. Many will concede the point that it is possible for an ape to subsist on rougher foods than fruit but few think it is possible that it could have happened here in North America, much less the bottom-lands of the south. The environment, the thinking goes, simply is not rich enough to support a population of large apes. The seeming paucity of food on our continent has long been one of the primary objections by mainstream scientists to the possible existence of the sasquatch. Great apes simply could not survive on the types of food found here, they claim.



Sasquatch researchers have long argued that our continent is rich in food-stuff and that there is an abundance of edibles that could sustain a population of large primates. Pine nuts, hickory nuts, acorns, various algaes (black algae) and fungi (mushrooms), greenbriar, various tubers, berries, many types of seeds, and the like are all abundant. This is especially true of the bottom-lands of the American south. Wildlife biologist Dr. John Bindernagel, who visited east Texas in 2001 and 2002, was struck by the richness and scope of the region's forests, which are predominantly mixed deciduous, as opposed to the largely coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest. Dr. Bindernagel recognized the value and productivity of deciduous forests in terms of wildlife habitat and he pointed out that large species of mammals living in southern forests would almost certainly require smaller home ranges than in northern coniferous forests. Anecdotal evidence also strongly suggests that America’s great ape is omnivorous. When you add items like small mammals, deer, shellfish, insects, frogs, grubs, worms, fish, eggs, and birds to the menu, you have a veritable buffet in the forests and bottoms of the south.

It would seem disingenuous to claim there is not an adequate enough food supply in North America to support a large primate when the continent has shown it is capable of supporting animals the size of the grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) and the black bear (Ursus americanus), not to mention a large number of Native American tribes, some of whom lived in what would seem to be very inhospitable regions, for thousands of years. When that is taken into consideration, to still claim there is not enough food to sustain a small population of large primates is ludicrous. One could argue the evidence needed to prove the sasquatch is real beyond the shadow of a doubt is lacking. That is something I can understand and will gladly discuss. To simply dismiss the possibility of a North American primate outright due to the “fact” that there is nothing for it to eat, however, is ridiculous and indicates laziness on the part of any who take that stand. Don't believe me? Just do a quick Google search on edible North American plants and see what you come up with. Anyone who argues that there isn't enough food for an animal the size of the sasquatch to subsist on simply has not done their homework.

But, you may ask, didn't black bears disappear from the Ark-La-Tex-Oma region? Doesn't that show the area can't sustain a population of large omnivores? No, it does not. Black bears were extirpated by human hunters and did not disappear due to any environmental factors. Take a look below at a passage from a paper written by TBRC members Alton Higgins and Daryl Colyer that addresses this very point:

"Did black bears disappear from East Texas because of a shortage of suitable habitat? No, or so says the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Biologists conducted a black bear habitat suitability study in four areas of East Texas: the Sulphur River Bottom (51,000 acres), the Big Thicket National Preserve (97,000 acres), the Middle Neches River Corridor (247,000 acres), and the Lower Neches River Corridor (312,000 acres). The purpose of the study was to determine the suitability of habitat in East Texas for the black bear, a large omnivorous mammal. The study is relevant because there may be a correlation between purported sasquatch and suitable black bear habitat. If an area is suitable for a large omnivore such as the black bear, it seems reasonable to posit that it is just as likely to be suitable for a small population of omnivorous sasquatches.



One part of the study dealt with food availability in summer and winter; all four areas scored very high. Biologists calculated a strong favorable rating for the availability of protection and concealment cover in all four areas. In the category of human/bear conflict zones, a less than favorable rating for the Big Thicket National Preserve was determined, but a moderately to strongly favorable rating was found for the other three areas.

Overall, the study indicated that the most suitable region for bears among the four study areas was the Middle Neches River Corridor, followed in order by the Lower Neches River Corridor, the Sulphur River Bottom, and the Big Thicket National Preserve. All four areas have had an abundance of bigfoot sighting reports.

Environmental suitability issues were also addressed by another group of scientists. While the curators of Chimp Haven in Northwest Louisiana probably do not spend too much time contemplating black bear habitat factors, they do devote much of their time discussing and evaluating primate habitat. According to their web site, Chimp Haven provides a permanent home for chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) retired from biomedical research, the entertainment industry, and those no longer wanted as pets. Their new sanctuary, presently under construction, is planned to accommodate 300 chimpanzees, animals which may be the closest relatives of sasquatches. Due to its ecology and climate, Chimp Haven curators believe that Northwest Louisiana is ideal primate habitat. Western Louisiana and East Texas are virtually ecological clones. It should come as no surprise that Northwest Louisiana was selected as the new site of Chimp Haven’s operations, given what we believe about sasquatch habitat."

The discovery of a Bulgarian hominid that survived in the savannah grasslands of Europe until 7 million years ago strongly implies that great apes have the ability to eat all manner of items and can adapt more easily and faster than anyone previously suspected to a variety of ecosystems and habitats. If the great apes of Europe could adapt to a seasonal climate and rougher diet, why could an ape that had migrated to North America not do the same?


Sources:

Universitaet Tübingen. "Most recent European great ape discovered." ScienceDaily, 13 Jan. 2012. Web. 15 Jan. 2012.

Daryl Colyer and Alton Higgins. "Bigfoot/Sasquatch Sightings: Correlations to Annual Rainfall Totals, Waterways, Human Population Densities and Black Bear Habitat Zones." TBRC Featured Articles. Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy.

A Sonoran Sasquatch?

The following article was written by TBRC Chairman Alton Higgins and discusses what may be the earliest documented descriptions of sasquatch observations and behaviors yet discovered in North America.

Sonoran Sasquatch
By Alton Higgins

The Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy has long advocated the position that a large upright primate exists in the most remote confines of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana, particularly the region where those states adjoin. However, it cannot be denied that popular culture strongly identifies Western Canada and the heavily forested parts of the Pacific Northwest as the most likely abode of the sasquatch. Certainly, legends and more contemporary accounts from other parts of North America have been recorded, but reports originating south of the U.S. border are rare.

While this may be considered to be a function of both language differences and a less technologically connected populace, it is probably safe to say that the sasquatch is generally visualized as a creature of the higher latitudes.

The following highlighted passages were taken from the writings of one of the Jesuit missionaries who worked in the villages of the Province of Sonora in the eighteenth century. As described by Brown in The Grizzly in the Southwest, eighteenth-century Sonora extended “northward on the west side to the Sierra Madre from Cajeme (now Ciudad Obregon), near the California Gulf coast, to Tucson,” an ecologically diverse area of deserts, semiarid grasslands, and mountains comprising the northern portion of the modern Mexican state of Sonora and the southern portion of Arizona.



Father Ignaz Pfefferkorn (b. 1725), a German Jesuit, labored among the Pima Indians from 1756 to 1767. Following the expulsion of his Order from Spanish dominions, he penned a Descripción de la Provincia de Sonora, first published in German (Beschreibung del Landschaft Sonora) in 1795, and later translated into Spanish and English. Because of their experiences and close observations of the geography and the different people who lived in the provinces, the reports and letters of missionaries provide valuable information for historians and anthropologists. Pfefferkorn is considered an extremely reliable and creditable observer, and his writings are widely cited by historians.



While journals and reports of European (and American) explorers, surveyors, travelers, and others were often extremely detailed and trustworthy, early accounts of wildlife written by Europeans could sometimes be rather vague. For example, it was not uncommon to describe several different kinds of bears based on color. In his discussion of the animals of Sonora, Pfefferkorn wrote:

Of the Sonora bears some have black hair, others dark grey, and the smallest number are a reddish color. These last are the most cruel and harmful, according to the statements of the herdsmen. The herdsmen who often have the opportunity on the field and in the bush to observe the natural impulses of animals tell also that the cinnamon bears eagerly go after ants. … Hence the Spaniards in Sonora call the reddish bear “oso hormiguero” [ant bear]. (Pfefferkorn 1949:107)

There were, of course, only two species of bear in the Province of Sonora during the eighteenth century. The “cinnamon bear” was almost certainly the grizzly (Ursus arctos horriblis), a species few people realize once existed at such southerly latitudes.

Much of Pfefferkorn’s book features information related by indigenous tribal members. In relating descriptions of bear depredations, Pfefferkorn may have inadvertently recorded some of the earliest accounts of sasquatch interactions with humans. It is likely that, as he noted the following Indian reports, he presumed they were talking about grizzly bear activity, as did Brown in The Grizzly in the Southwest. That certainly appears to be the case in the first sentence. However, it is also possible that the creature described by some of the Indians in the remainder of the passage was the sasquatch, not the predominantly diurnal grizzly bear.



Pfefferkorn wrote:

Bears are a special menace to stock raising, for they eat many a calf, and, if no smaller prey falls into their clutches, they will attack even horses, cows, and oxen. They delight especially in eating maize as long as it is still tender and soft. Woe to the field if a hungry bear breaks into it at night. He eats as much as he can and makes off with as much as he can grasp and carry in his mighty arms. In so doing he ruins even more of the field by breaking it down and treading upon it. The inhabitants of the country assert that a bear defends himself by throwing stones when one attempts to chase him away and that a stone hurled from his paws comes with much greater force than one thrown from the hand of the strongest man. This seems the more remarkable because the bear is supposed to throw the stones backwards. (Pfefferkorn 1949: 106-107)

Such comments may seem incongruous for a highly educated man who traveled widely and lived for years in bear country. Pfefferkorn had earlier described seeing a grizzly bear while he was on a journey. His Indian guide attempted to kill it, but the bear, wounded by his pursuer, killed the man instead. With this kind of personal experience, it seems odd that Pfefferkorn would think (or insinuate) the same species was capable of walking bipedally so as to carry off large quantities of corn “in his mighty arms” and to be able to throw rocks more forcefully than “the hand of the strongest man.” Is it possible that Pfefferkorn, while confident in the inherent truthfulness of his Indian collaborators, secretly harbored doubts that the Indians had accurately identified the nocturnal rock throwing visitors to their cornfields?

While the supporting evidence is, admittedly, extremely limited, and the proposition speculative, I propose the possibility that Father Pfefferkorn heard some descriptions of sasquatch observations and activity that have been credited for centuries to the grizzly bear.

References
Brown, D. E. (1985). The Grizzly in the Southwest. Univ. of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Pp. 16-18.
Pfefferkorn, I. (1949). Sonora—a description of the province. Translated and annotated by Theodore Treutlein, from the 1875 German edition. Univ. of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Pp. 106-108.

*This article was originally posted on the TBRC website and is reproduced here with permission.

Of Woodpeckers, Ghost Grizzlies, and Bigfoot

Now that some of the Ivory-billed mania has died down a bit, I thought I would add a few of my thoughts on this elusive bird, how it and other rare animals may have adapted to survive, and the similar difficulties faced by searchers of the IBW and other rare and/or undocumented animals.

The biologists who think the Ivory-billed Woodpecker still exists in the most remote forests and swamps of the deep south speculate that they are extremely wary. It is true that not a whole lot is known about IBW behavior but I think it is logical to assume it would behave much as other woodpeckers would in regards to interaction with humans. Many woodpeckers are quite shy around people and difficult to photograph. They will play a game of hide and seek with would be photographers and bird watchers, continually shifting positions to keep the trunk of a tree between themselves and their human pursuers. If the IBW was already a shy and reclusive species, like other woodpeckers, when their numbers were high then they would likely be incredibly wary now. As their habitat and numbers dwindled only the members of the species who were the most wary would have remained. It is likely, as a result of natural selection, that these individuals would have produced a generation of ultra-shy and reclusive birds. Even biologists involved in the well funded Cornell search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas estimated there was an 80% chance of missing the bird altogether in their main research area. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker was given many nicknames over the years one of which was the "Ghost Bird." It seems this name was very well deserved.


A clue to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker's reclusive behavior may be found in a quote from a 1937 issue of The Auk, a prestigious ornithology journal. In this issue, an article entitled "Recent Observations on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker" by Allen & Kellogg contained the following passage:

"On the other hand, failure to find the birds in a given area is no proof that they are not there, for they are not noisy except when disturbed; their voice does not carry nearly as far as that of the Pileated Woodpecker and in the big trees which they normally frequent they are easily overlooked. We camped for five days within three hundred feet of one nest and, except when the birds were about to change places on the nest or were disturbed, seldom heard them. We had great difficulty in following them through the woods to learn their feeding habits even after becoming very familiar with their notes. The senior author at one time stood under a giant oak and caught in his hand chips of bark and wood than an Ivory-bill was scaling from a dead branch high in the tree without either one being able to see the other. We had hunted for three days for this particular pair of birds without ever hearing them, even though we were frequently within three hundred yards of the nest, which we finally found because we happened to be within hearing distance when the birds changed places on the nest."

"Ghost bird," indeed.

This process, by which, an incredibly wary remnant population of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers may have been produced has been observed in other species, including large mammals. Mainstream scientists have long thought the grizzly bear extirpated from the South San Juan Wilderness area of Colorado. Persistently, and irritatingly to some biologists, sightings of grizzlies in the area continue to trickle in on a fairly regular basis. It has been theorized that this remnant population of grizzlies has become incredibly cautious and wary. Many who believe this great bear to still be present in the region have gone on to speculate they have become almost totally nocturnal. This behavior would be an adaptation that would make contact with humans unlikely and ensure only the most wary of all grizzlies would reproduce. These bears have been dubbed the "Ghost Grizzlies" of the San Juans. Several good books have been written on this topic. Ghost Grizzlies: Does the great bear still haunt Colorado? by David Petersen and The Lost Grizzlies: A Search for Survivors in the Wilderness of Colorado by Rick Bass foremost among them. Could the reclusive behaviors of the IBW and the grizzlies of Colorado be applied to another legendary cryptid?



Based on what we know about the behaviors of stressed and endangered animal populations, it is not surprising the sasquatch has not yet been documented. Many will claim what is known about IBW and grizzlies cannot be applied to a species that may not even exist. I will concede that to entertain my theory one will have to entertain the possibility that the sasquatch does exist. Once this is accepted as a possibility, then it seems logical, to me at least, to think that the sasquatch may very well be behaving in a similar fashion to other threatened species. They would be very wary and cautious. They would likely make every effort not to be seen by humans. Much like the IBW, the areas the sasquatch is thought to inhabit in the south are very inhospitable to humans. Areas where sightings are reported the most often in Texas are low in elevation, marshy, swampy, and heavily wooded. The undergrowth is often so thick and thorny it makes traversing the terrain all but impossible. These areas are an evaders paradise. From personal experience I can say that it would be very easy, even for a large animal, to remain hidden from human eyes simply by ducking behind a tree and being still and quiet. The sasquatch, like the "ghost grizzlies" of the San Juans, may prefer to move about mainly at night. This is a startling departure from the behavior of other great apes, however, it may be an adaptation necessary to ensure the survival of the species. It is likely that the sasquatch started out as a very wary species. Over time diminishing habitat and human encroachment, along with natural selection, have likely produced a super stealthy and reclusive population of animals. Many who read this piece will see the quote from Allen & Kellogg's article above which says in part, "On the other hand, failure to find the birds in a given area is no proof that they are not there," and be reminded of the old sasquatch researcher's mantra that says, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." I think it is an apt comparison.

Most people tend to think of animals as sort of wandering about the forest totally oblivious to whether or not people are present. This is simply not the case. It is accepted that there are animal species that intentionally hide from and avoid humans. If the animal in question is very rare to begin with, is very quiet, and intentionally hides from humans it is going to be extremely difficult to get a glimpse of. When you add the inhospitable habitats in which the species discussed here live to the equation the enormity of the task of discovery begins to crystallize. These factors will continue to be a stumbling block to those who seek to document a new species, like the sasquatch, or a remnant population of known animals like the Ivory-billed Woodpecker or the grizzly bear of Colorado.

My hat is off to those who continue to try.

*My thanks to my friend Alton Higgins for the heads up on the article from The Auk. Alton continues to be an invaluable source of information for this site.